Before Africans were forced onto ships and sold into slavery in the Americas, before the cries of Black mothers echoed through cotton fields and sugar plantations, there was another wound already bleeding — the theft of Indigenous lands. The transatlantic slave trade and the colonization of the Americas were not two separate histories — they were two sides of the same coin. One land stolen, one people stolen, both brutalized in the name of wealth, empire, and white supremacy.
As we mark Juneteenth, we are not just celebrating the end of legal slavery in the United States — we are also confronting the centuries of trauma, resistance, and resilience that shaped the land beneath our feet and the systems we still live under.
The Land Was Not Empty
When Europeans arrived in the “New World,” the land was far from empty. Millions of Indigenous peoples across what we now call North America lived in rich, complex societies. The Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Lenape, Cherokee, and hundreds of other nations had developed governance systems, trade routes, agriculture, and spiritual traditions long before a single European ship touched the shore.
Colonizers declared this land as “terra nullius” — nobody’s land — to justify taking it by force. What followed was centuries of genocide, forced removals, broken treaties, residential schools, and land theft. Indigenous people resisted every step of the way.
The Labor Wasn't Free
After Indigenous people in the Caribbean, Central, and South America were enslaved in mass numbers — many dying from disease, overwork, and murder — European powers turned to West Africa to fuel their greed. Africans were stolen from their homes, sold by force or deception, packed into ships under horrific conditions, and sent to plantations across the Americas.
This brutal system — known as the transatlantic slave trade — was the engine of European colonial wealth. Sugar, tobacco, cotton, coffee: all made possible through the violent exploitation of Black bodies.
The United States alone enslaved millions of African people. Families were torn apart. Children were born into chains. Enslaved people were tortured for not picking cotton fast enough. Black women were raped, experimented on, and discarded. And yet — they fought back. They sang songs coded with escape routes. They revolted. They survived.
What Is Juneteenth?
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865 — the day that enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were free, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the final enforcement of emancipation in the last Confederate state.
But freedom didn’t come with a clean slate. It came with:
•Black Codes–meant to re-enslave Black people through prison labor.
•Jim Crow laws–enforcing segregation and systemic oppression.
•Lynchings, redlining, police brutality, economic exploitation, and more.
Juneteenth is a celebration, yes — of freedom, survival, and Black brilliance. But it is also a reminder: justice delayed is justice denied. And no one is free until we all are.
Indigenous and Black Solidarity
There is a deep, often overlooked history of solidarity between Black and Indigenous peoples. Enslaved Africans who escaped often sought refuge among Indigenous nations. Some Indigenous communities welcomed and protected them. Others, influenced or forced by colonizers, took part in slavery themselves — a complicated truth we must face to heal.
Today, the descendants of those stolen from Africa and those dispossessed from Turtle Island are still fighting: for land back, for reparations, for clean water, for an end to police violence and systemic racism.
As We Honour Juneteenh, Let’s remember:
The land we stand on is stolen.The labor that built this world was stolen. And yet, the spirit of both Black and Indigenous peoples remains unbroken.
Honouring Juneteenth means honouring the fullness of this history — not just celebrating freedom, but demanding the justice and repair that was promised and never delivered.
If we want to truly celebrate freedom, we must free the land, free the people, and never stop telling the truth about how we got here.
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